Monday, December 19, 2011

Have Yourself a Cliched Christmas

Christmas is the time for beautiful traditional music, and mostly awful contemporary music. So many cliched lyrics -- "The Christmas Song" has most of them. Yes, nice melody, yes, always nice to hear Nat King Cole, but the tiny tots, and the reindeer, and the carols being sung by a choir, and the turkey and the mistletoe...song after song after song, the same cliches.

Are there any good lyrics to modern Christmas songs? "White Christmas" is in a class by itself, not because the lyrics are spectacular, just because they're right. No one but Irving Berlin could write that simply, and there's no use trying to imitate him.

Stevie Wonder's "Someday at Christmas" has a different slant and a good lyric.

And I like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane aren't on anyone's list of legendary masters of American song, but they outid themselves with "Meet Me in St. Louis," and they hit a touching, bittersweet note with this one.

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About Me

I'm a poet, novelist, all-purpose writer, teacher, husband, father and grandfather. My stepfather, Harvey Fite, created the sculptural masterpiece Opus 40, and I live on the grounds and take care of it.